What Rupert Murdoch’s succession means for the future of right-wing media

Geoff Bennett:

Rupert Murdoch, the chair of FOX and News Corp, is stepping down from running his global media empire.

John Yang has more on his legacy and his successor.

John Yang:

Geoff, over seven decades, Rupert Murdoch assembled an unmatched global media empire, newspapers, television and movies in the United States, Britain and Australia.

It includes FOX News, the FOX television network, FOX Sports, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Post. The 92-year-old Murdoch has used them to wield enormous political influence in three continents. But they have also led to some self-inflicted wounds, most notably FOX News' $787 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems for defamation over the 2020 election.

David Folkenflik is NPR's media correspondent. He's also the author of "Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires."

David, when Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch, steps down in November, he's going to hand the reins over to his elder son, Lachlan, who's 52. Do you think anything is going to change then about the approach, the tone, the political slant of particularly FOX News and the other FOX News outlets, newspapers?

David Folkenflik, NPR:

I don't.

I think that Lachlan is, if anything, slightly more conservative than his father, a little less politically engaged, to be sure, and a little less corporately engaged, and less sort of ceaselessly ambitious than his father to keep expanding and maneuvering.

He's really been focusing his maneuvering on getting atop of this family empire. So, no, I think that FOX has been trying — the two Murdochs, father and son, have been trying to figure out if there's a way to cultivate a challenger to Donald Trump in the Republican primaries for next year's presidential elections, giving, for example, Ron DeSantis the longest audition possible in front of viewers.

He's failed to catch fire. It's been widely reported they're interested in Glenn Youngkin and perhaps others. But if Donald Trump, as he did in 2016, steamrolls the competition, I think you're going to see Lachlan Murdoch's FOX News sprint to the front of the parade and make as if they were leading it all along, just as FOX News did in 2016.

John Yang:

Lachlan Murdoch has essentially been co-chairman with his father since 2019.

What has his performance in that period told us about him?

David Folkenflik:

Well, I think what it's told you is that he wouldn't have that job if his last name were yours or mine.

He's made some smart investments when — involving an online site involving real estate in Australia, the question of Tubi, which is sort of an advertising-premised television channel or service now. But it's nothing to indicate that this is somebody who brings incredible vision or incredible charisma to the job.

I think he's found to be charming inside FOX, personable, somewhat absentee, particularly during this COVID period, had spent time in Los Angeles initially, now in Sydney, where his family is based much of the time. I think that Lachlan Murdoch is seen as driven to get this job. And it's not entirely clear what much differently he'd like to do with this job.

I think one of the things that it has shown up is that Rupert Murdoch is in some ways truly a one-of-a-kind, very hard to replicate either through a corporate successor or a designated child.

John Yang:

One of a kind.

His legacy — what do you think is going to be a bigger part of his legacy, the business empire he built or the political influence he developed?

David Folkenflik:

Well, I think you're going to see probably in coming years, and particularly after Murdoch's death, Rupert Murdoch's death, that much of this unwinds, that the other adult Murdoch children who are control in with family trust won't want to hold onto it, simply for Lachlan to run.

They'd rather unlock the value. And in that case, the legacy that endures is sort of the success and the fun at times of his right-wing populism, but also the punitive and pugilistic nature of it that has been ultimately quite corrosive, not only to our sense of what fair play is in journalism in this country and in some of the others, like the U.K. and Australia.

In which he was so dominant, but even throughout our body politic, where the — this asymmetrical influence he had over the Republican Party and the degree of, in a sense, business and political power he obtained as a result has left him serving an audience that wanted rawer and rawer red meat, that ultimately led him to chasing his audience, rather than guiding them to a place that involved the facts.

And I think it undermined the sense of a young man who started out as a newspaper man with a keen sense for a story and for fun and for an inconvenient fact to a guy who's chasing the audience views by serving what they call the brand of FOX News, rather than the news provided by FOX News.

John Yang:

David Folkenflik of NPR, thank you very much.

David Folkenflik:

You bet.